Leaderboard

Points 2 and 3 are the ones I am reaaaally worried about. I definitely think the virus is bad. but as a neuropsychologist I am also veeery worried about the disaster that is this isolation experiment on populations who are psychologically at risk. As researchers we could probably never get a scientific experiment that is keeping folks alone at home for weeks past an ethical review board. The literature simply points to that being too harmful to peoples mental health, which eventually will express in heavily reduced life expectancy. In fact i started reading the scientific literature on the topic and am considering putting together a paper on the serious long term effects an important number of which are not easily reversable at all. however just telling people positive things is not gonna do it if it isn't true. That is not how folks work. If they realize that you are just positive to be positive nothing you say will be taken serious anymore. In fact I myself would be so much less anxious if only I felt the authorities were properly understanding and worried about what long term damage they are doing to folks mental health. On a personal note: I recently started studying optimism and how it relates to brain structure. I am about to get a paper on it past the reviewers. So I know about its benefits (and drawbacks). But ironically right now I find myself not being able to stand those who want to be optimistic all the time. Cognitively I get their need to be optimstic, to protect their sanity, but emotionally I just want to hit em because it feels as if they didn't grasp the size of the task.

The transfer market has really been heating up across the country but we haven’t heard anything from UNT or even had graduate transfers tied to UNT. We also haven’t seen any offers extended to high school or JUCO players since early February. I know it’s tough with the current circumstances, but we are seeing movement across the country. Currently two spots to work with. The lack of JUCO and HS offers lately makes me wonder if we’re evaluating the busy transfer market.

Has anyone learned why companies like Facebook and Apple had stockpiles of hundreds of thousands and millions of N95 masks and our hospitals and state and local governments did not (or did they)? I've been checking around and asking contacts that are fairly well connected and the best anyone has been able to come up with is "because of the California fires."

That's not good...I thought people were predicting a mini-baby boom in 9 months. No need for violence people, get a grip and go to a different part of the house or apartment and count to 10.

Retention of existing students and preventing a massive melt of the incoming class is of major concern to campus leadership right now in this pandemic.

influenza virus, Coronavirus, Rick does not judge by the color of your protein but by the content of your nucleic acid

Tough situation, but timing wise we are fortunate. If this happened under the Jackson/Rawlins shortfall & audit years athletics would have been in trouble. I'm confident Wren will have us positioned as well as possible from an athletic standpoint. From a University level the school is riding a multiyear wave of record freshman enrollment & donations. I'm sure it's not all going exactly to plan but as @MeanGreenTexan said with the University's current momentum we are in better shape than many others.

I’ve read about patients being admitted to hospitals not knowing their outcome but immediately requesting DNR’s for fear of facing the inevitable of suffocating to death because of false news reports and rumors that there’s not enough space and equipment.. Also there’s reports of suicide Hotline call rates climbing for obvious reasons.. And my cop friends are telling me domestic violence calls are starting to rise and we are experiencing the same as well. So yeah, I would rather the masses (surely you can’t be referring to the 10-20 of us here reading this thread) be given something positive to look forward to than being scared shitless of there being no hope at all. Rick

People like to feel like they are doing something/contributing. If some are finding ways to keep their employees employed instead laying them off, that's a positive thing, isn't it? I actually listened to the "Easter surprise" news conference. He said he "hoped" and "wouldn't it be great" if we get going again by Easter - I think he really was talking about people being able to attend Easter services and if that could happen, it would be a "beautiful thing." After listening him for 3+ years, people should know by now that's how he talks. It wasn't some EO to open up the country by Easter Sunday. Hate him or love him, but a least be honest. Most of the things you don't want Trump to talk about are in response to questions, so maybe "journalists" should stop asking him stupid questions. Our public health officials early and often referred to the disease as flu-like with many of the same systems. You know what they say about first impressions. According to the Univ of Wash Virology Lab that has been doing a lot of testing (and assuming they have been following CDC guidelines and only test people who present with symptoms or are at risk - contact with someone who tested positive or recent travel - in other words, patients who are most likely to have COVID-19), only 9.7% of their 43,751 tests have come back positive. So, out of a fairly large non-random sample size that is skewed to those most likely to be infected, over 90% are not. If you want to be pissed at someone, be pissed at NYC officials who kept down-playing the risk and encouraged people to ride the subway, attend the parade, go to movies, go out to restaurants and bars, etc., etc. *That* is why NYC is f'ed up and they have f'ed up the whole country.

I used the first acquired case that could lead to mass transmission. I believe your case was a traveling Chinese national. I of course didn't intend for this to be a full break down on the Filipino response...as @outoftown suggests above, I'd say Durate has some influence on the numbers and severity of quarantine... more my point was that if you look across the tropics and hot-weather zones of the globe, there doesn't appear to be a significant drop in infections/deaths tied directly to temperature. The tropics aren't immune from a traditional flu virus either, but don't usually see a seasonal pattern, rather random spikes and outbreaks. that COVID-19 is affecting all climates equally is concerning same goes for seasonality...the Southern Hemisphere is entering Fall...Australia's flu season is traditionally June-September and they're in it right now too look, I hope this thing subsides in Spring/Summer. maybe you're just trying to be positive...and maybe here that's ok here, but I think presenting any sort of an outlook of seasonality to the masses creates a false sense of the severity of COVID-19 and the idea that normalcy is just around the corner.

Sad to say, this may just as likely be all about testing and phillipine government not really putting out the real numbers one one hand, the lockdown being extremely severe on the other (Duterte essentially: You violate the lockdown, police has the right to shoot you), and finally the population being considerably younger on average.

I don’t think you’ve read this whole thread.

Joey Byerly

This. Isn’t. Flu. And, beyond coordinated responses, there don’t appear to be any difference in the spreading rate in warm/hot weather/high UV areas.

Do people only make the donation for seat benefits? I mean I will make my donation either way because I do it to support the students. I can understand holding to buy tickets but the donation should be a no brainer (unless you are having financial difficulties obviously).

Casinos & Restaurants... 2 bad industries to be in at this particular moment. Meanwhile... with so many loopholes in the Tax code, NT's guy is doing just fine.

https://247sports.com/Player/Raam-Stevenson-Jr-46083362/

With on exception it is the same as the CUSA All Conference Team. http://www.conferenceusa.com/news/2020/3/23/mens-basketball-mbb-ten-earn-nabc-all-district-honors.aspx

I would think that the current situation will offset some enrollment losses in that more students may decide to stay closer to home and perhaps commute. Our location should help.

@CMJ not a blog, but I started logging my own numbers. I check in with CDC and the TxDSHS every day after 5PM. Interesting to see that a link to the Google Doc gets it auto-embedded in this forum thread.

I started writing a journal about this a couple of weeks ago because I think people in a generation or two will wanna know what it was like to live through this and I don't think snarky comments on facebook are gonna cut it. Anyway, I say that because I've recorded the number of total world wide and US deaths at the bottom of each entry. You can really see the exponential curve we're on that way...and it's disturbing. In my first entry on March 19th there were 160 total US deaths. We hit 1000 dead Americans by my March 26th entry, 2K on the 28th, 3K on the 30th, and yesterday we went by both 4 and 5K.

Current fatality rates for the ten countries with most known infections compared against the same countries on March 23rd (in parentheses). One can see how the numbers tend to go up once the health system gets overwhelmed, or go down once they get on the other side of the curve (Iran). Note that since Turkey switched out from South Korea I don't have numbers for them to compare to the 23rd. 1.USA- 2.4% (1.3) 2. Italy- 11.9% (9.3) 3. Spain- 9.1% (6.7) 4. China- 4.1% (4.0) 5. Germany- 1.2% (0.4) 6. France- 7.1% (4.0) 7. Iran- 6.3% (7.8) 8. UK- 8.7% (5.0) 9. Switzerland- 2.8% (1.4) 10. Turkey 1.8% (NA)

6'3" 195 lb https://www.hudl.com/profile/9939686/Raam-Stevenson-Jr

Restricting travel to a small area and acting like everything is ok - is too little. Manufacturing at home masks that are $.10 to order from China after we are already in a shortage - that's too late. The phrase doesn't mean to give up. It's pointing out how the actions are just ridiculously little and late on the uptake. I went on Ali Baba and spent $40 to get hundreds of these simple masks. They showed up in 7 days. There is not a shortage of these masks.. they are cheap and mass produced all through Asia. Claiming to change up the factories to make these cheap masks is a stunt. It's product placement. This president cites his ratings - like that matters. He puts his son in law at the head of his rag-tag tiger team on how to address this, after over s month of denying it's a problem at all. His son in law gets on Facebook and had his friend's physician dad asking for recommendations.. like they are organizing a home by room party. geez. Yes - they did too little. And they did that too little, too late. They need to do more substantial things.. not saying by Easter that we are going to open for business. Or that the hot weather will kill it ( it's summer in Australia and Argentina right now). Or that some cocktail of drugs is be a miracle (too potentially lessen symptoms, not cute or prevent). Or t0 keep claiming that we have tested more than Korea and they called us up to say how awesome we are at testing (per capita they've tested 40x more than us and track origins of outbreaks). Or that 40% of our country is unaffected by this (that's landmass, not population). Or to keep purposely confusing this as a flu. Those claims are all fairly baseless - something a country ass volunteer fireperson might say on the internet. It is not something grownups that care would keep floating out there.. it's just too little.

Yes, SMU's oc schedule in MBB spells out willingness to play anyone anytime. GA. St., Jax St, New Orleans, Jackson St, Hartford, ACC, NW St and somehow Georgetown. Believe me their fans are not going to revolt by playing in your parlance, a lower tier school. Why do you think NT should be considered a lower tier school to SMU? In what other than price? Brand and Prestige, this is not in the forties. Forget scare, they believe it is in their long term interest to limit NT prominence in the DFW area as much as possible. I don't fault the strategy, but most should recognize that has gone on for decades.

Stupid

the first acquired case of COVID-19 in the Philippines was on March 5. They're total cases is now over 2300 with nearing 100 deaths. today's high temperature in Manilla: 94 degrees.

Not even remotely believable. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this effort a grade of 3.

A. Every school in C-USA wants to leave. B. Look at your calendar.

The warm/hot weather thing is an assumption (a safe one) that is not proven yet.

Sawyer Robertson just committed to Mississippi State. Wonder if Greek wants to be the only QB signing of his class

wait...wait...wait. What happened to Western Kentucky and Charlotte ? This is the first I've heard of these 2 schools wanting to leave. When/what happened ?

I heard on a podcast that Tilman Fertita was bleeding money right now. Owner of the Rockets and the only UH supporter Cougar fans mention when they talk about having mountains of cash.

It looks like congress is going to start work on another package. My question, not if it is or is not needed, but if it is full of money for non-virus related programs, should the President veto the bill? I believe we need to help people and keep the economy from collapsing, but this is not the time for anyone to add crap to try and get their "pet projects" funded by trying to claim one party or the other doesn't care.

I always said we should do a DFW tournament and we could rotate who host it each year.. North Texas SMU TCU UTA if you want to go bigger you could add others in.

Seems like he's been here about three years now. If he hasn't gotten over the "deer in the headlights" thing (or happy feet as I call it) it isn't likely he ever will. When I did my assessment of all the QB's in the fall of Mason Fines freshman year, my main assessment of him was that "he oozes confidence from every pore". Now, good coaching helps that situation, and even improves that situation, but it doesn't give it to you. MF had it when he walked onto the practice field. And no amount of getting banged around by what must have seemed to him like freaks of nature was able to change it...…..and it showed. I wouldn't say that Aune has that level of confidence, but in the limited time that I've seen him in scrimmage situations, and games, he seemed pretty unrattled. Other QB's I've observed that seemed to naturally "have it" (in chronological order).... Ken Washington (but he still had happy feet), Jordan Case, Joe Stevenson, Greg Carter, Rusty Hill, Scott Davis, Mitch Maher, Jason Mills, Scott Hall, Daniel Maeger, Giovanni Vizza and (for the most part) Riley Dodge. I saw Vidal Carlin play twice and Steve Ramsey only in a spring scrimmage. In Vidal Carlin's case I only paid attention to how he got the ball to John Love. The rest of the time, because I was in one of the Bands invited to the homecoming game, I paid much more attention to what the twirlers of the other Bands sitting around me looked like.

Already paid for my season tickets and made my Mean Green Scholarship Fund donation for the year. Figured it might help "bridge the gap" financially during these troubled times. I am 100% certain that should anything happen to the season, Wren would allow me to either roll the payments and donation over to the next season or offer me the option of a full refund of both. I would hope that anyone who is able to do so financially go ahead an pay for season tickets and make your Mean Green Scholarship Fund donation. Only if you are able, of course, but if you are it could really help the department sail the ship through these troubled waters.

I think this is going to magnify the importance of regional competition. Save the money on travel and hopefully be able to increase attendance!

I think NT leadership has put us in a good enough spot that we'll be OK. It's schools like LA-Mo, LA-La, LATech, SJSU, and other FCS/DII schools in California,Louisiana & other struggling states that are already skating on extremely thin ice financially who may suffer a terrible fate.

And whatever NCAA distributions were to have received this year will be greatly reduced. My thinking is this- could this be the beginning of the haves and have nots going their separate ways?

Just what we needed.

Seems like there's some unknowns. But UNT announced its refunding students that lived on campus prorated for the remainder of the semester as of last week. That would mean roughly 6 weeks living rent and meal plans being refunded. I don't know how many we have living on campus but has to be somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 I'd think. Assuming the lesser number of 6,000 at a refund cost of $1,500 each (remaining rooms and meals) that would be $9 million. It's just the start and I assumed low end of all of those numbers. Then summer enrollment has to be suffering from this I'd imagine. Summer isn't as big as fall and spring but a school like UNT in a metro area probably does pretty well in the summer. Kids that come home for the summer often take classes at UNT. UNT has a TON of international students. The fall enrollment numbers for those kids have to be in bad shape I'd guess. It seems Vito's point is, there's a lot of unknowns. But if this continues, it most definitely will hurt enrollment. Enrollment would hurt athletics directly (less students = less athletic fee) and indirectly (University suffers they will have less to give athletics). Like many businesses, I'm sure UNT is hoping like hell this thing gets under control. so many are suffering.

And Judy just being Judy.

Where is he listed as a coach? https://meangreensports.com/sports/football/coaches

Pay the bonus. March Madness is insured. The teams won't get as much as they might have earned had the tournament been held but certainly more than enough to cover his bonus. He did everything required of him and through no fault of his own was unable to play in either tournament. He had already qualified for the NIT and I believe that we would've been the CUSA tournament champion as well. I couldn't be much happier with McCasland's results. He took a sub-.500 Benford team; lost the best player (who still had eligibility) and has won a CBI tournament and a CUSA title. Who would've believed that three years ago? Don't lose this coach over a piddling bonus. He's definitely a keeper.

PAY HIM--LIKE YESTERDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!